First of all I wasn’t talking about the dialogue in Vol 1, I think the dialogue in that is great! I was referring to the borring dialogue in Vol 2.
I think you are totally wrong in saying Bill is not a smart ass, heck even Beatrix calls him a smart ass in the film! I think Vol 2 has loads of ‘cool smart ass’ characters such as Beatrix, Budd, Elle, Bill, Budd’s Boss, Pai Mei and Esteban. The essence of QT’s characters is that he creates very cool, ‘smart ass’, larger than life characters. All of his films are based on these characters. No matter what the situation was, no matter what type of scene it was eg, romantic, violent, emotional, funny or a serious scene, Tarantino allways delivered us with very interesting lines of dialogue.
Yes I know Vol 2 is much more an emotional film and concentrates on things which are not based on our society but that doesn’t mean the dialogue can’t be interesting. Take Jackie Brown which was also an emotional film, was the dialogue in these emotional scenes borring? Was the dialogue in the romantic scenes in True Romance borring?
Obviously every character talks differently and has a different personality, that is a given in almost every film (written by good writers).
Vol 2 does have it’s (very few) moments in delivering to us interesting and quotable dialogue but the majority of these come from minor characters. The dialogue in his other 3 films and Vol 1 is so interesting I could listen to them talk sat around a table all day long. This has got nothing to do with me wanting more dialogue with swear words in or drug references in or anything else you may consider to be ‘cool’. It is about having characters say things which are interesting which the characters in Vol 2 lack in general. At a few times I thought the dialogue was pretty lame eg, the Karen Wong pregnancy test scene, the opening chapel scene, Bill talking to Beatrix scene. None of these dialogue pieces were interesting to listen to, they were relatively ‘normal’ and not very original.
What makes QT different to other writers is because of the dialogue he writes. It is just so damn interesting regardless of what is being discussed and that doesn’t show in the most parts of Volume 2. None of the cleverness, wit, humour, ‘awe’ factor is present in the dialogue in Vol 2 and we are left with ‘normal’ dialogue much like in any other film which is why I previously said that it does not seem Tarantino-like.
I hope I have got my point across!
